Chapter 18.—The Disasters
Suffered by the Romans in the Punic Wars, Which Were Not Mitigated
by the Protection of the Gods.

In the Punic wars, again, when
victory hung so long in the balance between the two kingdoms, when
two powerful nations were straining every nerve and using all their
resources against one another, how many smaller kingdoms were
crushed, how many large and flourishing cities were demolished, how
many states were overwhelmed and ruined, how many districts and
lands far and near were desolated! How often were the victors on
either side vanquished! What multitudes of men, both of those
actually in arms and of others, were destroyed! What huge navies,
too, were crippled in engagements, or were sunk by every kind of
marine disaster! Were we to attempt to recount or mention these
calamities, we should become writers of history. At that period
Rome was mightily perturbed, and resorted to vain and ludicrous
expedients. On the authority of the Sibylline books, the secular
games were re-appointed, which had been inaugurated a century
before, but had faded into oblivion in happier times. The games
consecrated to the infernal gods were also renewed by the pontiffs;
for they, too, had sunk into disuse in the better times. And no
wonder; for when they were renewed, the great abundance of dying
men made all hell rejoice at its riches, and give itself up to
sport: for certainly the ferocious wars, and disastrous quarrels,
and bloody victories—now on one side, and now on the
other—though most calamitous to men, afforded great sport and a
rich banquet to the devils. But in the first Punic war there was
no more disastrous event than the Roman defeat in which Regulus was
taken. We made mention of him in the two former books as an
incontestably great man, who had before conquered and subdued the
Carthaginians, and who would have put an end to the first Punic
war, had not an inordinate appetite for praise and glory prompted
him to impose on the worn-out Carthagians harder conditions than
they could bear. If the unlooked-for captivity and unseemly
bondage of this man, his fidelity to his oath, and his surpassingly
cruel death, do not bring a blush to the face of the gods, it is
true that they are brazen and bloodless.

Nor were there wanting at that time
very heavy disasters within the city itself. For the Tiber was
extraordinarily flooded, and destroyed almost all the lower parts
of the city; some buildings being carried away by the violence of
the torrent, while others were soaked to rottenness by the water
that stood round them even after the flood was gone. This
visitation was followed by a fire which was still more destructive,
for it consumed some of the loftier buildings round the Forum, and
spared not even its own proper temple, that of Vesta, in which
virgins chosen for this honor, or rather for this punishment, had
been employed in conferring, as it were, everlasting life on fire,
by ceaselessly feeding it with fresh fuel. But at the time we
speak of, the fire in the temple was not content with being kept
alive: it raged. And when the virgins, scared by its vehemence,
were unable to save those fatal images which had already brought
destruction on three cities155155 Troy, Lavinia, Alba. in which they had been received,
Metellus the priest, forgetful of his own safety, rushed in and
res
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cued the sacred things, though he was half roasted in
doing so. For either the fire did not recognize even him, or else
the goddess of fire was there,—a goddess who would not have fled
from the fire supposing she had been there. But here you see how
a man could be of greater service to Vesta than she could be to
him. Now if these gods could not avert the fire from themselves,
what help against flames or flood could they bring to the state of
which they were the reputed guardians? Facts have shown that they
were useless. These objections of ours would be idle if our
adversaries maintained that their idols are consecrated rather as
symbols of things eternal, than to secure the blessings of time;
and that thus, though the symbols, like all material and visible
things, might perish, no damage thereby resulted to the things for
the sake of which they had been consecrated, while, as for the
images themselves, they could be renewed again for the same
purposes they had formerly served. But with lamentable blindness,
they suppose that, through the intervention of perishable gods, the
earthly well-being and temporal prosperity of the state can be
preserved from perishing. And so, when they are reminded that
even when the gods remained among them this well-being and
prosperity were blighted, they blush to change the opinion they are
unable to defend.